My Story from Failure to Success to Significance – Behind the Scenes Part 2
Today’s episode is what I like to call “behind the scenes” of my life. I share a personal story of a failure I had to endure. It was tough for me to share behind the scenes elements like this until I remember that being vulnerable is not a weakness. Showing your sensitive side is a sign of courage. This behind the scenes takes you right into the darkest time of my professional life. I share what happened to me and the questions I asked myself that helped me find my direction. Join me today for a look behind the scenes of my story from failure to success to significance.
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Behind the Scenes Part 2: The Transcript
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
You’ve caught me in the middle of a big story of things that are going on in my life. If you haven’t already heard part one, all you have to do is go to genehammett.com/part1 and you can go back to the beginning. If you want to just keep where you are right now, here’s the quick preview of that.
I remember on January 15, 2010, it was the darkest day of my life. I was waiting for an important phone call from my business partner for a $3 million deal, that would never happen. I had run a successful business for nine years. I built my team. I built up my own systems and trust in myself and confidence, but something wasn’t right. And part two, I wanted to share with you what happened after the moment I realized that everything was falling apart and they really weren’t going to be put back together. And it was a really tough time for me because everything I had done professionally had been pretty successful at growing my business to have 5 million, creating the partnerships, creating the relationships, building trust, building a name for myself. That meant something to me. It was all wiped out in one day in one deal. No.
I want to tell you a little bit about the reflection of looking back and looking at the things I missed in my own life. It’s hard to share this with you, but I wanted you to understand who I am and why I do what I do. The thing that you want to really focus on here is yes, I did lose everything, but I’ve actually moved forward because of it. It’s hard and there were a lot of people that lost money. I had customers that paid. I had big partners that had paid in large sums of money and it pains me to know that I had to go to bankruptcy and I fought this in a legal battle for three or four years before I ended up doing bankruptcy. When I looked back at the business I was running, and when everything fell apart, I could see clearly that I wasn’t being the kind of leader that I really needed to be. I failed to evolve the kind of person I was in the first three years. That business where I, you know, just didn’t know enough to be scared and to worry about these things. I just jumped in and moved and took action. I made mistakes, but I just kept going. And that’s part of leadership. You’ve probably been there yourself. But what happened to me as I fell into this, this complacency, this trap of success.
In fact, that’s what I titled my book called “The Trap of Success.” And if you want to get the full story, actually you can give do that. But this is not to sell copies of the book. I’m just telling you a little bit so you understand who I am and where I’m coming from. This story of losing everything really centers back on, I wasn’t evolving as the leader I needed to be. Yes, the business was growing. Yes, we were making more money. We added more team players. We added more systems. I had more free time. I got comfortable. I got way too comfortable and in those dark days of trying to figure out where I was going next, looking back at where I was showing up where I just wasn’t being courageous enough, I had these ideas for innovation inside this industry. I had started to plan them out. I started to talk about them with others.
In fact, I talked about them so much that my wife would say, when are you going to do something about this? I didn’t have an answer. The only thing I could think about looking back is I wasn’t courageous enough to make the transformation inside myself to move forward the way I wanted to in the business. I had all this money coming in and all this free time. It would have been the perfect time to do it, but I didn’t. I got trapped by my success and when I look back at that, it really is the reason why I am better on the path that I’m on now. I decided to really dedicate my life to pouring into others and developing them, transforming them, helping them be more confident, courageous, helping them work on the mindset and the strategies that takes to grow their business so that they continue to evolve as leaders.
That’s who I am. I got a coach training right after that and I worked on myself because to be honest with you, losing the money was hard. Losing the house was horrific. What hurt the most have we had a two-year-old son that had a play crib, and we weren’t going to be able to keep it. I wanted to keep it as an heirloom tip to hand down to him for his children, but we had to move from the big house. In fact, we had to short sell it. We had to let go of everything. You know, I didn’t go homeless. I ended up renting a place. And I tell you all this because I want you to understand I was, I really failed, to feel human. I failed, to really understand what my place was in this world. I started moving forward anyway with this coach training. And one big piece inside of that was I was looking for forgiveness. And I remember again talking to my wife, she’s a smart woman and I said, you know, I want to forgive the person who took the money from us. And she’s like, what are you talking about? She actually had some expletives with that, but I explained to her that I wanted to let go so that I can move forward. And I didn’t feel like I had let go yet. And this is after about six months. Well, I ended up working with my coach on the powerful aspects of letting go and what that meant. And what I realized quickly was the forgiveness I was seeking was not for him. It was the forgiveness for myself that I just, I let us into this wrong path and it really was painful for all of us.
This story is something I wanted you to know about me because yes, we’ve all been successful. We’ve all, you know, achieve great things in life, but there’ll be times when you’re called upon to evolve and you may want to get comfortable. And this video, part two of this story is all about getting uncomfortable about growing. It’s all about evolving into the leader that you know you need to be. All this is a part of a story about me sharing with you a big transformation in my life, a defining moment. And this is what I do now for leaders. I help them with their defining moments. I helped them really step up into a bold place in their lives and move forward.
This is what I love to do. This is who I am. So in part three, I’m going to share with you the rest of the story, so I really appreciate it. If you want to go ahead and get it, just go to genehammett.com/part3 you can spell it any way you want to. You can get there and you can continue the story right now, or you can wait to the next behind the scenes next week coming out on the growth think tank podcast. If you haven’t already subscribed, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and go to part three now, if you want to genehammett.com/part3 See you there.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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